Hollywood

A timely--if unrelated--centerpiece for a group exhibit of work by young Los Angeles artists is a stained and faded flag. In 1965, an otherwise obscure artist named Marc Morrel tied the flag into the squat shape of a bolster to protest the Vietnam War in 1965. The following year, when the piece was exhibited in a New York gallery, dealer Stephen Radich was convicted of violating the city’s flag desecration statute. After a prolonged court fight, the conviction was finally reversed in 1974 by a federal district court.

The newsworthiness of Morrel’s piece, of course, lies in the recent hullabaloo over presumed flag desecration--outraged responses to the recent Supreme Court decision on flag burning and to a flag piece displayed earlier this year at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. But distanced from the era that inspired it and separated from the rhetoric that swirled around it, the bundled flag itself seems a calm and sober piece. A quiet little parcel, it suggests repression and constraint--a national symbol made musclebound and dumb and humble.

Of the other 13 artists in “Fresh Art from Hollywood,” the most familiar name is that of Judy Fiskin, whose tiny black-and-white photographs offer crisp glimpses of the quietly distinctive personalities of Southern California homes.

One of the most distinctive pieces in the show is “Posing Threats,” Kevin Miller’s large painting of three silhouetted soldiers in uniforms of different vintages. Although the doughboy’s rifle is easy to make out, it’s anyone’s guess as to what objects the other two are holding, and perhaps that mystery (suggesting the ultra-specialized aspects of modern-day warfare) lies at the heart of the piece.

Painter Judy Kameon looks afresh at a number of familiar objects, most rewardingly in “Large Honeycomb,” in which the irregularities of the artist’s touch and the brushy color deliberately fight the serial rigor of the magnified grid pattern.

James Trivers’ down-home canvases are filled chock-a-block with little vignettes (key moments from the life of Elvis Presley in “Elvis, What Happened?”) and overlaid with big images that pop out when viewed with 3-D glasses. Nicholette Kominos’ pale paintings with odd bobbing shapes are most appealing when regular patterns of texture and quirky form unite, as in “Periods of Water No. 3.”

Of Lauri Sing’s mixed-media works, the most ambitious is “Boots, wood plank, cup and two figures,” in which blocks of color, a real wood plank and objects rendered as if in imitation of print techniques suggest a puzzling yet oddly intense form of rebus.

Daniel Wheeler offers several enigmatic wall pieces, the most formally satisfying of which is “Utterance (III),” a tall plaque with a thermometer-like slit, attached to a low-slung vessel containing a wax deposit.

Other artists with work in the show are Paul Knotter, Chris Wilder, Peter Zecher, Kevin Miller, Darcy Huebler and Tomas . G. Henry III. (Newspace, 5241 Melrose Ave., to Aug. 5.)